I’m back! And this week, I’ve got actual things for you to read. Hooray!

Let’s kick off this edition of What I’ve Been Reading with a couple of culinary abominations. The first is Campbell’s Super Mario-themed chicken noodle soup, reviewed by Zarnyx for Kotaku’s Talk Amongst Yourselves blog. The noodle shapes don’t even look like Mario characters! The second is a hot dog that replaces the bun with a second wiener to make a meat-on-meat sandwich. Zero carbs! Gross. (Courtesy of Michael D’Alimonte of MTL Blog.)

Simon Parkin of Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the development process of the original BioShock. The more I read about series creator Ken Levine, the more I’m convinced that he’s a difficult man to work for. Perhaps his decision to head up a smaller team instead of a large studio is for the best.

Finally, this one’s a couple of weeks old, but it’s still worth reading. You may have heard about GAME_JAM, an event designed to showcase collaborations between YouTube personalities and indie game designers in a competitive reality show format. For better or for worse, that event will never come to fruition. Jared Rosen of Indie Statik has the inside story on how it crashed and burned. The culprits: two of the biggest problems currently plaguing the games industry and gaming culture – sexism and excessive commercialism.